I see those Human Brain/Monkey Brain posts and I identify with them to a degree but sometimes I think my instincts are decidely more… ursine.
Human Brain: Oof, seasonal depression is really hitting me this year.
Bear Brain: MUST CONSUME FIVE TIMES MY MASS IN SEAFOOD AND/OR SMALL ARTHROPODSHuman Brain: Ugh, the holidays are really stressful.
Bear Brain: WHY ARE WE EVEN AWAKE RIGHT NOW WE SHOULD BE BARELY METABOLIZING IN A HOLE SOMEWHERE. GO BACK TO BED.Human Brain: oh look my package came i should find the scissors-
Bear Brain: TEAR INTO IT WITH YOUR CLAWS THAT YOU TOTALLY HAVE.Human Brain: oh hey! it’s springtime and the bees are out again!
Bear Brain: TEAR OPEN A MOTHERFUCKING BEEHIVE IT’S FUCKIN’ H O N E Y T I M EHuman Brain: oh! the cat has startled me by jumping on my shoulder! Bear Brain: SLAP THE SURPRISE. SLAP IT RIGHT ACROSS THE KITCHEN WITH YOUR MIGHTY PAWS AND SHOW HIM WHO’S BOSS.
Human Brain: THAT’S THE KITTY NOOOOOOO!!!!
Tag: Brains
Purple Brain
The Brains of Castamere
I Can’t Stand the Brain
A Hard Brain’s Gonna Fall
November Brain
Have You Ever Seen The Brain?
Here Comes the Brain Again
It’s Braining Men
Singing in the Brain
Set Fire to the Brain
Somewhere Over the Brainbow
The Brain In Spain Stays Mainly On The Plain
I’m Only Happy When It Brains
The brain is just 8 lbs of meat that sits in complete darkness and plays a video game of what it thinks is the most realistic thing ever.
it’s 3lbs, not 8. also it’s not really meat, it’s mostly fat with some water and salt. You have a wad of soggy bacon inside your skull. And this blob of gross unprocessed jello somehow manages to run a complex biomechanical suit using less electricity than it takes to work a lightbulb.
And people wonder why humans are so fucking weird and have odd experiences that aren’t actually real. I mean, if a bowl of tapioca pudding managed to hallucinate so vividly it invented calculus, it also going “dude, i heard a weird noise and i’m 100% sure it was the ghost of the neighbor’s cat which hasn’t actually died yet” would be just as expected as anything else.
Omfg dying
Intuition is real. Vibes are real. Energy doesn’t lie. Tune in.
This is actually called thin slicing. Your brain recognizes patterns from very small “slices” of information by comparing them to things you have experienced before. This all happens very quickly on a subconscious level without our conscious mind being involved. So intuition is actually really fast pattern recognition, and it can be very accurate. So yeah, if you have a gut feeling that a person or situation is not good, get the hell out. Your brain knows what’s up.
When I was young – because I’ve always been a big skeptical pain in the ass – I thought that when people were talking about interpersonal “energy,” they were on some Gay Ass Shit.
Years later, after spending hundreds of hours reading studies about intuition and neuroscience and pattern recognition and the processing power of the subconscious mind, I realized that that kind of talk – “she has such good energy,” “you need to read the energy of the room,” “I just got some really bad energy off of that guy” – is a convenient shorthand for the lightning-fast, weirdly-accurate, real-as-fuck subconscious processing of the probability of positive or negative social outcomes likely to result from hundreds or thousands of variables. That “energy” isn’t a tangible thing floating around in the air. It’s your brain updating you constantly with information about your situation. Listen to it. Especially if it’s telling you to be nervous or scared. Your brain is very good at recognizing danger. Let the enormous processing power of your subconscious mind protect you. It’s better at spotting patterns than you are.
“Bad energy” isn’t some hippie shit. It’s your brain setting off a claxon because it knows something’s not right.
Thin slicing is wonderfully helpful, but be aware that if it’s doing its pattern recognition from bad sources, you need to actively override it. We’re raised in a racist society, inundated with racist media, and bombarded with subtly (or unsubtly) racist advice. Thin slicing can save your life, but it’s also the cause behind the unconscious elements of racism (and misogyny/ableism/antisemitism/islamophobia/etc.) that we all suffer from
Trust your instincts, but if your instincts tell you something that seems prejudicial, double check their work.
human brain: sometimes we need to do boring things with no gratification or immediate benefit
monkey brain: absolutely not. die
Human brain: ok what if we eat chips while we do the boring thing
monkey brain: I’m suspicious but keep talking